Method and system for diagnosis and analysis of products troubles
First Claim
1. A computer-implemented method of diagnosing and analyzing fault information of a product, said method comprising the steps of:
- a) creating a hierarchical fault tree structure representing causal relationships of faults based on structure and characteristic data of the product and storing said fault tree in storage means, said fault tree having branches allocated with weighting coefficients predetermined according to previous faults and causes thereof;
b) inputting new fault information of the product;
c) in response to the inputting of said new fault information, searching said fault tree in accordance with said weighting coefficients based on said fault information stored in said storage means to thereby determine a cause of the fault of said product;
d) generating and outputting data concerning an adjustment or repair of said product suffering from the fault based on the determined cause of fault as well as the structure and characteristic data of said product;
e) supplying specific fault information including information concerning timing of the occurrence of the fault of said product, symptoms of the fault, the determined cause of the fault and the adjustment and repair data to a marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility through a data collecting station, wherein said marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility is supplied with the specific fault information regarding a plurality of units of the product, to thereby provide a database for said fault information, wherein the database fault information is continuously updated; and
f) statistically analyzing, in said marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility quality of said product based on all or a part of the database fault information.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A computer-implemented method and system for diagnosing and system for diagnosing and analyzing fault information of a product is carried out by (a) creating a fault tree representing causal relations between faults and causes thereof base on information of past faults and information concerning the structure and characteristics of the product, and storing the fault tree in a storage unit, the fault tree having branches allocated with weighting coefficients; (b) inputting new fault information of the product into the computer; (c) searching the fault tree in accordance with the weighting coefficients based on the fault information stored in the storage unit to thereby determine the cause of the fault; (d) generating and outputting information concerning an adjustment or repair of the product suffering from the fault based on the determined cause of the fault as well as the information concerning the structure and the characteristics of the product; (e) supplying information concerning the timing of the occurrence of the fault, symptoms appearing in the fault, the cause of the fault and the adjustment and repair data to a host computer through a data collecting station to thereby construct a database for the fault information; and (f) the quality of the product based on all or a part of information of the database.
147 Citations
10 Claims
-
1. A computer-implemented method of diagnosing and analyzing fault information of a product, said method comprising the steps of:
-
a) creating a hierarchical fault tree structure representing causal relationships of faults based on structure and characteristic data of the product and storing said fault tree in storage means, said fault tree having branches allocated with weighting coefficients predetermined according to previous faults and causes thereof; b) inputting new fault information of the product; c) in response to the inputting of said new fault information, searching said fault tree in accordance with said weighting coefficients based on said fault information stored in said storage means to thereby determine a cause of the fault of said product; d) generating and outputting data concerning an adjustment or repair of said product suffering from the fault based on the determined cause of fault as well as the structure and characteristic data of said product; e) supplying specific fault information including information concerning timing of the occurrence of the fault of said product, symptoms of the fault, the determined cause of the fault and the adjustment and repair data to a marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility through a data collecting station, wherein said marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility is supplied with the specific fault information regarding a plurality of units of the product, to thereby provide a database for said fault information, wherein the database fault information is continuously updated; and f) statistically analyzing, in said marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility quality of said product based on all or a part of the database fault information. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
-
-
6. A system for diagnosing and analyzing fault information of a product with assistance from a computer, comprising:
a fault diagnosis system, including; storage means for storing a fault tree representing causal relations for previous faults and causes thereof in a tree structure together with information concerning structure and characteristics of the product, said fault tree having branches allocated with weighting coefficients, a terminal capable of communicating with said computer for inputting new fault information of the product, means responsive to the inputting of said new fault information for searching said fault tree in accordance with said weighting coefficients based on said fault information stored in said storage means to thereby determine the cause of the fault of said product, and means for generating and outputting information concerning adjustment or repair of said product suffering from the fault based on the determined cause of the fault as well as said information concerning the structure and characteristics of said product; and a marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility, including; means for receiving specific fault information including information concerning timing of an occurrence of the fault of said product, symptoms appearing in the fault, the determined cause of the fault and the information concerning said adjustment and repair, via a data collecting station, wherein said marketing product quality information collecting/analysis facility receives the specific fault information regarding a plurality of units of the product, to thereby provide a database for the fault information, wherein the database fault information is continuously updated; and means for statistically analyzing quality of said product based on all or a part of the database fault information.
-
7. In a system having a database for managing production information including design information, production history information and inspection information of products manufactured in a factory, market information including fault information regarding products in a market, repair information of the products, and sales information of the products, a total quality management system comprises:
-
means for connecting the factory with a service base in the market via a communications network; means for receiving, at said service base, said market information including information representing faults having occurred in products in the market or at least a type of product incurring the faults, fault events, names of faulty parts and information representing treatments for the faults, and for storing said market information into said database via said network; user interface means for receiving an instruction for outputting display information for analyzing fault causes for each product type in accordance with the information stored in said database; a fault analysis module wherein a distribution of either one of at least a number of faults, repair costs and fault ratio corresponding to an analysis item of at least fault date, product type, product name, event code and operation months is obtained based on the information stored in said database in accordance with respective data processing methods, said distribution being displayed by a monitor of a work station in accordance with either one of displaying methods of at least a transition diagram graph, a constituent ratio diagram and a dispersion diagram, object data being restricted each time an element of the analysis item is received by said user interface means and the displaying is repeated, at the same time said analysis item, a data processing method, an analysis method and a factor analysis content are recorded and the history is added on the display thereby to reproduce an inverse order and narrowing of the cause of fault is easily made possible; a fault occurrence prediction model for predicting the number of faults at each future number of months of operation with respect to the product type or part name restricted by said factor analysis content repeatedly narrowed in said fault analysis module based on the information of fault occurrence, the sales information of a product of the product type or a product assembled with the product of the product name presently stored in said database; and an alarm management module for generating an alarm when a fault ratio predicted by said fault occurrence predict module exceeds a target value of a predetermined fault ratio of each product type, and for predicting a time when the fault ratio exceeds the target value. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10)
-
Specification